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LETTERS 



O.V THE 



CONDITION OE THE AFEICAN RACE 



IN THE 



UNITED STATES. 






/' \^»>' 



BY^ A SOUTHERN LADY. 



-*•»- 



PHILADELPHIA: 
T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS, PRINTERS. 

1852. 



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537 



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LETTERS 



ox THE 



AFRICAN RACE II THE UNITED STATES. 



■«*»»> 



LETTER I. 

Washington, Seiyt. 15, 1851. 
To General John IL Howard : — 

South Carolina, our native State, my dear brother, was 
one or two centuries ago the pet of royalty. It was settled by the 
Cavaliers under the promise of large grants of land from the king ; 
and our own family, it seems, was induced to emigrate there from the 
stimulant of the same pledges. I do not remember Avhether the titles 
you still hold in your possession of the large grant we received, was 
dated in the reign of George II. or his predecessor. Be sure, when 
you come to Washington this winter to make us a visit, to bring all 
these old land titles, etc. to me ; they will be valued relics of a by- 
gone age. This grant to us was situated in what is now called Beau- 
fort District. It was a neck of land not very far from Broad River, 
surrounded by rich islands, which our ancestors by their enterprise 
and energy, finally converted into a flourishing cotton, rice, and 
corn growing plantation. They were literally " monarchs of all 
they surveyed." They courted no man's favor, they feared no man's 
frown ; and neither tradition nor the malice of enemies has ever, even 
up to the present generation, accused them of a disgraceful, lawless, 
or criminal act. 

Believe me, that the spirit of lordly independence they always 
developed, was generated more or less, by their owning so much 
land, upon which they could produce every necessary of life without 
extraneous patronage. I am proud, very proud, my brother, that 



LETTERS. 



this venerable plantation, so sacred to us all, has been our home 
from that day to this. No stranger has ever been able to buy from 
us one foot of the soil. It has been ours, wholly ours, from the time 
vre first received the grant up to the present moment. The bones of 
our ancestors (some of whom fought bravely in our triumphant war 
of independence) have rested there for four, five, or six generations ; 
and surely every refined feeling of our hearts must of necessity cling 
with love and veneration to this consecrated ground. You may form 
then some idea of my solicitude, when I, who have been compelled to 
live at the North for several years, learned through the papers that 
Beaufort District was one of the principal starting-points of the 
secession movement, and that you yourself was much inflamed in 
your feelings in favor of it. My brother, you will not suspect me 
of treachery, when I assure you that South Carolina is utterly mis- 
taken in imagining that the respectable and dignified men of the 
North are abolitionists. Look at the self-sacrificing, the almost 
godlike patriotism of Webster's attitude, when he stood up firmly 
against his own Northern prejudices and the seeming threats of his 
own constituents, and boldly argued in the defence of our rights 
under the Constitution as slaveholders. His enemies fondly hoped 
that even his own State would expatriate him from her affections, and 
refuse to send him back to the Senate. Many of them asserted that 
politically he was now dead ; yes, they were foolish enough to be- 
lieve that his noble, patriotic. Christian eff'orts to make peace among 
all the contending members of that great family of brothers that 
constitutes these United States, would blast his influence at the 
North. 

I should, indeed, have blushed for the Yankees, if this, Webster's 
crowning moral act as a peace-maker, had remained unappreciated. 
But you remember how many communications he immediately re- 
ceived, approving of his course. I was very near him in the Senate, 
when he delivered his truly national speech, and not very far off sat 
our own physically emaciated, but still majestic Calhoun. My eyes 
were riveted in veneration and hope, first on one, and then on the 
other of these two blazing lights of genius ; and I was delighted after- 
wards to learn that Mr. Calhoun, just before he died, remarked, 
" that although Webster had been his political opponent all his life, 
he had always been forced to approve in liim, one striking moral 
peculiarity, namely, that he could not speak with power on any 
subject, if that subject did not command the entire consent of his 
intellectual judgment that it was right and true." Would to God 



LETTERS. - 6 

that all our versatile statesmen and orators were alike incapacitated 
to argue without conviction of the truth of their theme ! 

Webster's manner on the momentous occasion when he delivered 
this great speech, was that of a man who fully comprehended the 
solemnity of his attitude as a national peace-maker, and hnd also 
fully counted the cost of offending perhaps his political constituents 
at the North. But that healthy appreciation of truth that has always 
commanded a perfect mastery over his intellect, and that unfeigned 
love of his country that has grown with his growth and strengthened 
with his strength, seemed to have chased out of his mind and heart 
every thought of self. There was no vainglorious ranting or roar- 
ing about his own patriotism in desiring to become a martyr for his 
country. No, there was the most quiet, simple dignity, and yet evi- 
dent consciousness of overpowering strength in the truths he was 
expounding, that marked his every word and look. In general 
society in Washington, Webster's manner is cold and abstracted, and 
to mc he has the look and air of a man who, like King Solomon, 
realized the perfect vanity of all earthly hopes and schemes. I have 
heard a great many ladies remark, that when they spoke to him at 
the levees, his eye rarely expressed that he even heard what was said, 
and he seems to perform the tedious conventionalities of receiving 
crowds of company on public occasions, like a man whose body has 
been galvanized to perform these ceremonies, while his mind is far 
away, in a world of its own creation. But when he stands up to 
make a speech in the Senate, he is certainly the most august, com- 
manding, and godlike-looking specimen of dignified manhood, that 
could be found in the Avorld. No one, I assure you, on this earth, 
looks like Daniel Webster. 

I have dwelt thus minutely on his peculiarities, because the South- 
ern people must ever regard him with friendly interest, and as enti- 
tled to their deepest respect, for his fearless exalted patriotism in 
upholding at all times the letter and spirit of that constitution that 
defends us as slaveholders. 

But not only has Webster, my dear brother, thus consecrated the 
whole weight of his influence, for the carrying out in good faith all 
the provisions of that world-renowned instrument, that was framed 
by men whose far-reaching sagacity, intellect, and philanthropy must 
always be in the van of that of the abolitionists ; I say, not only 
has the Massachusetts statesman, whose mental strength is an ava- 
lanche of crushing capacity, volunteered his influence in defence of 
our rights under the Constitution, but the most gifted of our Northern 



b LETTERS. 

brethren generally, have poured out the fires of their eloquence in 
this patriotic cause throughout the Northern cities, making stump 
speeches, and urging the people, by every instinct of love to their 
noble country, to cease the suicidal effort to goad the Southern States 
into withdrawing from this incomparable Union. Believe me, my 
brother, the abolitionists are as hateful to the dignified statesmen at 
the North, as they are, or ever can be, to those at the South. In all 
my journey ings at the North, and in all my arguments with Northern 
men, I have never met a single gentleman, who would own himself 
an abolitionist. Even Gov. Seward, whom Ave regard as so politi- 
cally unsympathizing with the South — but who is nevertheless a man 
of talents and education, and also possesses many domestic virtues — 
even he, I will venture to assert, would not have his reputation for 
common sense, or philanthropy, or enlarged statesmanship, insulted, 
by really advocating, that all the negroes in the South should be made 
free, and let loose upon society to indulge many of their untamed 
fiendish passions, their extreme laziness, and their utter incapacity for 
governing themselves, positions that every Southern planter, and every 
man who has benevolently studied their character, or possesses re- 
spectable inductive power of thought, has long since acknowledged. 
The Northern man does not, I assure you, love the black man, and never 
dreams of lifting him up to equality with the Anglo-Saxon race ; and 
when he says, "I would not own a slave," he means, that he could 
not tolerate negroes near him, and would not, on any account, endure 
the vexation and trouble of taking care of them. Did you ever hear 
an instance of a Northern man marrying a rich Southern girl, and 
then magnanimously giving up all her property in slaves, for the sake 
of his love to the black race, or of the abstract principle of freedom ? 
And do we not know from daily observation, that the most exacting 
and hard-hearted masters in the Southern States, are Northern men, 
and foreigners ? The reason of Avhich is, that they are not ac- 
quainted with the negro capacity of mind or body, and therefore 
expect the master's orders to be appreciated, and his work done, in 
quality and quantity, such as the white laborer accomplishes with 
case for his employer at the North. Even the clergymen, who come 
from New York to South Carolina, and take charge of our country 
churches, rarely if ever command the confidence of the poor blacks. 
In Grahamville, South Carolina, where the slaves are so numerous, 
they have said to me, over and again, " We do not like that Northern 
parson ; avc see he despises us in his heart, and his manners are so 
cold and unsympathizing, and so exacting towards us, that we can- 



LETTERS. 7 

not talk to liim about our souls, with the freedom we do to our own 
ministers, who own slaves themselves, and therefore know how to 
feel for us." 

This fume and fuss in Congress, my dear brother, about slavery, is 
nothing but sectional jealousy, and the want, frequently, of mental 
ability to make a striking speech ; and therefore, this exciting subject 
is seized upon as a dernier resort, for the purpose of arresting the 
attention of the public to speeches that are otherwise so tame that 
they could not command a single hearer. 

The Southern gentlemen, who are generally planters, arc ricli, and 
lordly in their feelings. They labor severely with their brain, but not 
with their hands, to conduct their large establishments ; and this sort 
of aristocratic life is hateful to some classes at the North, and they, 
therefore, from a natural feeling of envy, strive to impoverish us by 
the abolition of slavery. There may be a few, who are sincerely de- 
luded, and have benevolent instincts in their eiforts to free our slaves ; 
but I have proved that these are those kind of fanatics, who compass 
the earth to carry out schemes of philanthropy, while they allow the 
poor blacks, immediately in their midst, to famish with hunger, and 
die like brute beasts, without a knowledge of their Creator, or the 
hell to which their crimes are hurrying them. 

The black man can never rise to any eipality whatsoever with 
any other foreigner that emigrates to the North. And the Free States 
are beginning to enact laws, to drive the colored people out from 
among them. They say, "They are a nuisance, a perfect incubus;" 
that all foreigners can do somethin'z; useful in manufacture or the 
arts, or in agriculture, which Avill advance the country that nestles 
them in its arms ; but the free black man is too lazy, too unenter- 
prising, or, what is much more true, too degraded a caste, to be 
allowed to compete with the white laborer. 

In the city of Brotherly Love, in the midst of the disciples of 
William Pcnn, I searched for some evidence of equality between the 
two races, and I found none. There are no professional black gen- 
tlemen there, and very few who are even mechanics. The industrious, 
respectable negro, in Philadelphia, accumulates the same comforts, 
and performs, almost universally, the same menial work that he does 
in Charleston, South Carolina ; that is, he carries " bricks and mortar," 
and waits on Avhite people as a servant, in private houses or hotels ; 
while the lazy and immoral, who are the slaves of their own degraded 
natures, and have no kind masters to feed and clothe them, and con- 
trol their brutishness, die like dogs, without any of the necessaries of 
life. 



8 LETTERS. 

I will soon write an account of the lowest classes of negroes in 
Philadelphia, where I have taken some pains to ascertain the facts. 
I understand that they are even worse off in New York, where the 
white foreigners are so numerous, that they monopolize all the work, 
and push the black man not only out of all mechanical trades, but 
even out of the most menial labors. And then, the hatred of races 
is so prominent there, that I heard of an old black preacher, who, in 
one of his sermons, w'hile detailing to a white congregation their nume- 
rous grievances in the city of New York, asserted, " That he, old as 
he was, had to walk three miles to church, to preach, because the 
white people would not allow a negro to ride in the omnibuses." In 
the South, a black man can ride alongside of his master, and he will 
converse kindly all day Avith his slave, because he has no fear that he 
will presume to equality with him; but in the North, gentlemen are 
forced to keep these people at an awful distance, to prevent their ig- 
norant and impertinent assumptions. 

My heart burns with indignant feeling when I see that the poor 
foolish negro is seduced from his master, and brought to our Northern 
cities, or smuggled into Canada, w^here he is alike despised and de- 
serted, and left to famish, or exist in a place so small and filthy that 
our cows could not survive a winter in them. I have obtained a 
statistical pamphlet, printed by highly respectable gentlemen in Phi- 
ladelphia, that reveals the hopeless desolation, and the agonizing 
sufferings, of the miserable, degraded classes of negroes in that city. 

Poor slave ! you once had a master, whose interest and whose hu- 
manity protected you, and supplied your every want ; who kept you 
from idleness and drunkenness, and from the indulgence of crime and 
fiendish passions ; but, like a wayward child, you have fled from your 
best, your most sympathizing friend, and sought refuge from salutary 
restraints among the Pharisaical abolitionists, who should be classed 
with those men whom the Saviour addressed " as compassing sea and 
land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him two- 
fold more the child of hell than yourselves." The abolitionist urges 
the slave to kill his master, who comes to Pennsylvania, to recall him 
home. Does such advice belong to the spirit of Christ, or the spirit of 
the devil? Is any such counsel to be found in the word of God? 
which commands "servants to be obedient to them that are your own 
masters, according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness 
of your heart, as unto Christ." "Not with eye-service, as men- 
pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God, from 
the heart." "With good-will doing service, as to the Lord, and not 



LETTERS. 9 

unto men." Immediately after this exhortation to servants, there is 
one to the master ; and therefore, no one seeking truth could assert 
that the Bible does not recognize the relative condition of master and 
slave. 

The deluded, or rather the impious abolitionist, after advising the 
negro to become a murderer, after making him defy the laws of God, 
and the wise laws of our great country, leaves him to starve. For 
such Pharisees can never perpetrate an act of charity, where no no- 
toriety is to be gained, where no eye but that of the great God is to 
be witness to his self-denial in making personal sacrifices, in order 
that he may minister to the daily, hourly wants of his victim, the poor 
desolate, ignorant African, whom he has enticed, unfledged, from the 
warmly-feathered nest that God had given him in his master's own 
self-interest, which formerly commanded for him everything necessary 
to life or godliness. 

But a truce, my brother, to these reflections, that stir up the depths 
of my heart, as a warm friend of the slave ; and let me here assui-e 
you, that the very last elections in the North prove that the abstrac- 
tion called abolitionism is so absurd, that it cannot any longer be 
used even as a political hobby. Free-soilism, which is much more 
popular, as a political step-ladder, has no basis more elevated. 

No ! it is nothing more than sectional jealousy, lust of power, and 
love of strife, which is inherent in strong wills against determined 
adversaries, that keeps up this war of words, — and not of conviction in 
Congress ; and then designing, ambitious men, Avho, all the Avorld over, 
use the prejudices, and passions, and weaknesses of the masses, for a 
stepping-stone to their own selfish aggrandizement, rejoice in and 
stimulate every idiosyncrasy that can be converted into political 
capital. I do earnestly wish that our Southern members could see 
through the object of demagogues, in encouraging these furious debates 
in Cou'^ress. For a dignified or contemptuous silence on our part, 
would put a stop to the quarreling and to the vainglorious taunting 
speeches, that are used as the stepping-stones to high ofiices, by these 
heartless politicians. There are nearly twenty-five millions of people 
in the U. S., audit would be absurd stupidity in us to expect they could 
exist without seeking some element for strife, or envy against each 
other. Union of interest and of feeling, among a dense population, can 
only be expected when we all have learned to " love God with all our 
hearts, and our neighbors as ourselves." Suppose the North, from 
their majority of votes, does prevent us from carrying our slaves to 
California, or Oregon. This will not hui-t us, as the present area of 



10 LETTERS. 

slavery is so large already in the United States, that wc can scarcely 
conceive of a time, when we would not have abundant room to operate 
with our slaves. These slaves were thrust upon us by Spanish, Dutch, 
and English* cupidity, prior to 1776. And you know that, if the 
majority of Korthern votes quadrupled our own, they could not abolish 
slavery at the South, without first abolishing the Constitution ; as that 
instrument, in the letter and in the spirit, received us as slaveholders, 
and guaranteed our property ; and God requires, when we swear to 
our neighbor, that we disappoint him not, even to our own hindrance. 
Mr. Calhoun said, that power was always aggressive, but these United 
States are bound together by such subtle chains, that, before they can 
be snapped, the whole people must be given up to believe a lie, and 
to commit national suicide; as, "united we stand, divided we fall," 
from all our hard-earned national glory, prosperity, happiness, and 
well-directed influence over other nations. 

In the higher questions, affecting tlie divine government, Africa, 
at the era of the discovery of America, furnished, under the most 
sordid influences, a portion of her population to supply the defect of 
the aborigines of this country in compulsory labor. But let us remem- 
ber that, although it is too true that they were brought here by 
Spanish, Dutch, and English cupidity, they were taken from the 
very loAvest state of barbarism. Not only were they destitute of the 
knowledo;e of God, but also destitute of social virtues. A brutal father 
often selling his own children for a glass of grog, or to obtain any of 
the lowest temporary gratifications. Dare any Christian man, there- 
fore, assert that the degraded African heathen has not been benefited, 
for time and eternity, by being brought even as a slave to this Christ- 
ianized country ? 

Why, oh Avhy ! should we quarrel like children, about those things 
that have really no existence in the convictions of our judgment ? 
Let the abolitionist rave as he pleases ; he knows that there is such an 
inherent hatred of races in the human heart, that the black man can 
never rise to equality with the white race in America, or anywhere 
else, except it be in Africa. 

I sometimes think that the mark put upon Cain, by which all were 
to know him, Avas a black skin. You remember the remarkable pro- 
phecy of Noah, in Gen., chap.ix., 25th, 20th and 27th verses, " Cursed 
be Canaan ; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. Bless 
ed be the Lord God of Shem ; and Canaan shall be his servant. God 
shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem ; and 
Canaan shall be his servant." You know the Indian is generally 



LETTERS. 11 

supposed to be descended from Sliein, the wliite man from Japlietlr, 
and the black man from Ham. If so, the prophecy has been literally 
fulfilled in America. For we dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan 
is our servant. But another truce, my brother, to these reflec- 
tions, that engage my thoughts night and day. In my next letter, 
I will recall the happy condition of my father's numerous slaves, and 
then contrast them with the de";raded class of negroes in the Northern 
cities. In the mean time, do not imagine that, because I live in the 
North, I am not a Southerner in all my aspirations. No ! I am proud 
that I was born in Soutli Carolina ; and, whatever politicians find it to 
their interest to say to the contrary, there is no people in the United 
States, or in the world, who arc more refined, intelligent, magnani- 
mous, self-respecting, and bold in defence of their principles, and ex- 
alted in their conceptions of right and wrong towards God and man, 
than the people of South Carolina. 



LETTER II. 

Washington, Sept. 20, 1851. 
To General John H. Howard. 

In my last letter, my dear brother, I promised to write off for 
you a reminiscence of the happy condition of my father's numerous 
slaves, on our plantation in South Carolina, and then to contrast 
it with that of the " fugitives from labor" who have fled to the 
Northern cities. I can speak certainly, however, only of the con- 
dition of this degraded class in Philadelphia, and in New York, 
where I have been on a visit of several months, and took some 
pains to ascertain all the facts, of which you shall be duly in- 
formed. IIow I do love to recall the patriarchal resi:)onsibility, and 
tenderness, my father felt for his poor, ignorant, dependent slaves. 
My earliest recollections arc fraught with the happiness with which 
his negroes sallied out in the fields, Avhen it did not rain, or bounded 
into the cotton-house, Avlien the weather was inclement, to perform 
their daily tasks, in cleaning the cotton for market ; how they sported 
their jokes together when at work, and returned home singing, after 
their specified healthy labors were done. They all had their comfort- 
able houses, that comprised a chamber for each family, and a sitting- 
room, from which towered up a capacious chimney, and the said room 



12 LETTERS. 

was ventilated bv a front and back door, and two windows, out of 
which you looked upon a garden or orchard of their own ; and, not a 
very great way off, an acre or tAvo of ground, given to each of them 
by their master, to plant Avhatever they pleased, for their own 
use, independent of the weekly provisions he gave them. They had 
free access to all the wood thev chose to burn, and it is the habit of the 
negro to keep up large fires all night, winter and summer. As soon 
as then- task was done for their master (and these tasks, I believe, 
are determined by law), their Avhole time was their own. My father's 
negroes generally finished their work in the fields, at two, three, or 
four o'clock, P. M. Every infant child had its own particular nurse, 
as none of the boys and girls were put to Avork in the fields, until 
they Avere twelve or fourteen years of age, and even then, great care 
was taken to give them only such moderate tasks as would not pre- 
vent their groAvth, or full muscular development. The employment, 
therefore, of all the boys and girls, was to be nurses for their mothers' 
infant children. When the mothers Avere out in the fields the nurses, 
and the infants, were all left in the charge of an experienced Avoman, 
who Avas responsible to the master, if anything happened to them, 
during the absence of the parents. Their every complaint against 
each other Avas lodged in his ear ; as the passions of the negro are so 
cruel, so uncivilized, that every planter has to make stringent laws 
against their fighting on the plantations. By his own wisdom and 
authority he settles their disputes. I remember a simple-minded 
African AVoman, called Binah, on our plantation, Avhose husband was 
a smart, rich carpenter, named Toney. They Avere both our own 
slaves, and AAdien her husband died, his relatives assumed that he had 
left all his property to them. She had been a most exemplary Avife, 
and as soon as my father learned the injustice that was to be done to 
her by Toney's relatives, he called up old Mingo, his faithful driver, 
and commanded him to see that nothing really necessary to Binah, 
of her husband's property, should be taken from out of her house. 
This poor wife was thus rescued from the sharpers, Avho Avould have 
stripped her of all the hard-earned comforts her husband had through- 
out life surrounded her Avith. Binah always used to set a table for 
her husband (they had no children), and she stood up and waited on 
him until his meal was finished ; after he retired, she ate her own 
dinner. I believe this sort of, at present, unfashionable respect for 
husbands is common among all genuine Africans. 

Almost all the men on my father's plantation OAvned a canoe, and 
made money by catching fish, shrimps, and oysters, in their own time. 



LETTERS. 13 

For one drum fish, which is very large, and the negroes are very 
successful in catching them, they could obtain a dollar or perhaps 
more in the neighboring villages. They raised hogs, poultry, vegeta- 
bles, fruits, groundnuts, bennie, and anything, indeed, they chose to 
plant on their patch of ground. They were given certain days in 
the year to work their own fields ; but this did not seem very necessary, 
^ every day of their lives they had some time that was exclusively 
theirs. My father owned large twelve-oared boats, in which we 
made frequent trips to the towns of Beaufort and Savannah. His 
negroes would load the said boats with their own produce, that they 
were carrying to sell, until I used to feel fearful lest the weight of 
the cargo would sink the boat. The most delightful music I ever list- 
ened to was the wild songs of these athletic boatmen, at night, on 
the water ; and should there chance to pass us a "rival yacht," our 
men would ply their oars with renewed energy, and challenge their 
neighbors to a race. If the master, or any other planter, bought a 
hog, a horse, or poultry, or anything else from a negro, and did not 
pay him, such a man was scorned by public opinion as a low-lived, 
dishonest wretch, who could be so degraded as to cheat a poor African 
slave. 

The master and his people are so identified, that if a white man 
molests your slave, you are instantly insulted ; and you frequently 
quarrel with and even fight him, as quickly as you would resent a 
wrong done to your child ; and any master, who is known to be cruel 
or unkind, is perfectly despised by public opinion. 

You know all the negroes in the South are allowed three or four 
days every Christmas, for a jubilee, and I so vividly remember the 
patriarchal benevolence my father's countenance exhibited, when out 
of his abundant larder he contributed everything necessary to these 
jovial feastings among his slaves. Some of them spent the holydays 
in playing on the violin, and other instruments, for their young friends 
to dance by ; others went from place to place, to visit their neigh- 
bors, and others held prayer-meetings, where most of the night, even, 
was spent in singing psalms, in religious exhortations, and in prayer. 
In sickness, my father almost always administered their medicines 
with his own hands, and personally saw that their nurses attended to 
all their wants. One of my slaves had an inf\int child two months 
old who was attacked with an affection of the windpipe. I never saw 
such extreme suffering; it was one continual spasm and struggle 
for breath. The physician visited it several times every day, but 
could give no relief. The poor little sufferer seemed as if it would 



14 LETTERS. 

neither live nor die. These extreme tortures Lasted a whole week 
before it breathed its last ; and my own mind was so excited by its 
sharp and constant convulsive shrieks, that I never left it night or 
day, and could not sleep, even a moment, sitting by its side ; and yet 
its own mother slept soundly at the foot of the bed, not because she 
was fatigued, for she was required to do nothing but nurse the dying 
child ; and I only mention it to show that the master's feclinirs are 
sometimes even deeper than the mother's. 

The negroes are taught in the Sunday-schools all the requirements 
of God's law, and their masters ar^e now commencing to build churches 
for them on the plantations. They are so gregarious, however, they 
prefer to walk several miles to a largo church, and there exchange 
greetings with each other. They confide in their master, and they 
feel no enmity towards him when he is forced to punish them. My 
father cultivated numerous fruit-trees, and nearly the whole family 
of nuts. Sweet and sour oranges, figs, pomegranates, pears, &c., grew 
in great abundance around our hospitable mansion, that we named 
Orange Grove; and the long row of neat-looking negro-houses, al- 
ways kept purely white, from being whitewashed every year, gave the 
place, as you passed it on the river, the appearance of a small city, 
almost enveloped in woods. He also owned hundreds of cattle, sheep, 
hogs, cows, and numerous horses and oxen, and he raised for his own 
use (as it is considered mean for the master to sell poultry ofi" of a large 
plantation), I say raised scores of turkeys, geese, ducks, and many 
other domestic fowls ; and yet his negroes rarely were known to steal 
anything from him, as they knew they would always come in for their 
share of their master's temporalities, independent of what they raised 
for themselves. 

The women are the most enthusiastically fond foster-mothers, when 
they are called upon to nurse the infant child of their owners. They 
love their master most sincerely, and mourn with intense grief when 
he dies. They attend his funeral, and, from respect to his memory, 
are not required to work for several days afterwards. Their own 
deq,d they bury with great ceremony, and always have a feast when 
the funeral is over. 

My father always provided for them the most suitable clothing, 
shoes and blankets, &c. They received their weekly allowance of 
provisions every Monday morning, and Avere, besides, encouraged to 
ask for any extras that their sickly caprices of appetite might demand 
from their master's private larder. Their pipes and their tobacco, 
and all such to tltem important luxuries, were never forgotten in lay- 



LETTERS. 15 

ing in our stores for the year. The clothing of the men and children 
was cut out and made by the seamstresses on the plantation, appointed 
for the purpose. This patriarchal oversight over them, from day to 
day, and their simple feeling of confidence and love towards their 
master, has of late years been impinged upon by the diabolical efforts 
of the abolitionists, who whisper in their ear the envenomed poison 
of suspicion, hatred, and murder, against their protectors. But no- 
thing charms the negro so effectually from his allegiance, as the hope 
that, if he can get to the North, and be free, he will not have to work. 
Twenty years ago, the planters purchased every year barrels of ardent 
spirits, as part of their negro rations, but now it is rarely ever given 
to them except by order of the physician. I never remember to have 
seen a field negro drunk, on the plantation, except on Christmas ; 
and even then not more than one or two, and my father owned nearly 
a hundred; and I never saw a black woman, who was a slave in Ca- 
, rolina, drunk, in all my life. I grew up, my brother, with the con- 
viction that the Southern slaves were the happiest poor people in the 
world, because I saw with my own eyes the system pursued towards 
them on my father's plantation, where they were so numerous, so 
healthy, so jovial, so contented; and I knew that all the plantations 
in South Carolina were governed, more or less, by the same princi- 
ples of self-interest and humanity. 

The abolitionist scoffs at this picture of rational happiness. He 
says, "We take the same care of our horses and our dogs, and for no 
other reason than that they are our property." I myself have studied 
the selfishness of the human heart, until I believe there is greater 
security in its being the self-interest of our friends, to cherish and 
take care of us, than perhaps from any other motive. A man may 
cease to love his wife, his father, his mother, his sisters, his brothers ; 
but who ever heard of his hating, or designedly hurting himself, un- 
less he was a lunatic. Self-love is an undying passion ; and so long, 
therefore, as this principle governs the human heart, the abolitionist 
may cease his absurd commiseration of the Southern slave. We may, 
as these Pharisees profess to believe, be divested of every noble social 
virtue ; but we have still remaining too much of the Yankee in us, to 
hurt our own property, by cruelty or hard work, or any tyrannical 
oppressions that destroy the health or curtail the lives of our slaves. 
And let us entreat that the poor wretches, who live and die like dogs 
in New York, Philadelphia, and other Northern cities, may come in for 
a small share of that surplus humanity, that seems like a fire in the bones 
of the abolitionists ; that is seeking vent, but not in godlike charities to 



16 LETTERS. 

the miserable starving foreigners, wlao arrive by thousands every day 
among them ; but, Satan appearing to them as an angel of light, 
sends them to the peaceful cottage of the far-off slave, to stimulate 
him to fiendish and bloody deeds. There are in the South some bad 
men. They are bad as sons, as husbands, as fathers, as neighbors ; 
and yet these very men have motives to be kind as masters, that no- 
thing but idiocy or lunacy can ever blind them to. I myself be- 
lieve there are hundreds of men in tlie world, who are incapable of 
a more intelligent or elevated affection than that they extend to a 
favorite horse or dog ; and many a heart-broken wife would feel her- 
self fortunate, if she could share with the said favorite horse or dog 
her husband's solicitude for their comfort and well-being. 

My brother, the slave has, you know, a great protection too in public 
opinion, that, among the chivalrous gentlemen of South Carolina, 
brands with infamy a cruel master, or one who neglects those fellow- 
beings who are by God placed under his care, and entirely dependent 
on him. In all my intercourse with the world, I have never seen more 
beautiful sensibilities developed than I have seen around the dying 
couch of an old family slave, where no eye but that of God criticized 
the acts and feelings of the master. You remember our good old Amey, 
who lived to the age of one hundred and ten years. You used yourself 
to carry her her coffee and other dainties for breakfast, and she never 
tired of telling us about our father's childhood and our grandfather's 
kindness to his slaves. When she was dying, she insisted that I 
should sit close to her, and receive her last words. 

I am very sure that the disinterested devotion I have seen masters 
extend to the wants of their decrepit and utterly helpless old slaves, will 
be remembered by Jesus Christ at the last day, and that those mas- 
ters who have thus performed their Christian duty will receive the 
plaudit, " Well done, good and faithful servant ; enter thou into the 
joy of thy Lord." But, soothing as these retrospections of our fa- 
ther's useful life and humane management of his numerous slaves are 
to my heart, I must turn from the pleasing picture, and tell you 
what the abolitionists have reported about us at the North. They say, 
" That one of our punishments is to bury our negroes up to their necks, 
and leave them for a whole day perhaps thus imprisoned." " That a 
master claims all the property of the slave when he dies, and his wife 
and children get nothing ; and that he takes it even when his said slave 
is living, if he feels so disposed." " That, when we sell our negroes, 
we separate little children from their mothers." " That we lock up 
our negroes every night on the plantations, and the master never 



LETTERS. 17 

lies down on his pillow without arming himself with pistols and a 
broadsword, to protect his family, in case of midnight alarm, from the 
revengeful, murderous passions of those he thus tyrannizes over." 
These, and numerous other such like monstrous falsehoods, are the 
weapons that are used at the North, to create sympathy in the cause 
of freeing our slaves. The devil is the father of lies, and no doubt 
especially claims as his offspring the fabricators of such diabolical 
perversions of truth. I have spent my whole life in South Carolina, 
in the midst of numerous plantations of slaves, and yet I do here in 
the presence of God assert, that I never saw, never heard, never 
even conceived of anything approaching to the tyranny above de- 
scribed, and generated only in the fiendish fancies of those whose 
cause needs such props of lies. My only argument with any persons 
who have heard and believed such monstrosities about us is, that the 
slaveholders may be destitute, as the abolitionists would fain believe, 
of every benevolent virtue, but they certainly are not divested of 
their love of self ; and, therefore, they could not hurt or be cruel to a 
single one of their slaves, who, if he died, would be a loss to them of 
six, seven, eight, nine, or ten hundred dollars. There is a Chinese 
proverb that asserts, "that lies have short legs," and I do therefore 
trust that the unmitigated falsehoods of the abolitionists, as detailed 
above, may soon come to a final halt ; and may they never again have 
any power to inveigle one single lover of his country into their dan- 
gerous, treasonable, and wicked creed ! 

In my next letter, I will give you an account of the miseries of 
some of the fugitives from labor, and of the degraded colored people in 
the Northern cities. In the mean time, permit me to urge you, my 
brother, and all other planters in the South, to renewed efibrts for 
the temporal and eternal welfare of the black race. God bless you 
for all the noble sensibility and numerous acts of kindness that I 
have seen you extend to the poor African, wherever you have found 
him ! May God hasten the time when Ethiopia shall stretch out her 
hands in adoration to Jesus Christ, as the Saviour who has at length 
redeemed her, and all other nations, from the curses entailed upon us 
by Adam's transgression! 



18 



LETTERS. 



LETTER III. 

Washington, Nov. 1, 1851. 
To General John H. Howard : — 

I DETAILED to jou, my brotlicr, in my last letter, the happy 
retrospections that I so much love to indulge in of my father's judi- 
cious and benevolent management, as lord of the manor that had de- 
scended to him in a direct line from four, five, or six generations of 
his ancestors in South Carolina. Oh ! how contented, how divested 
of care, these poor ignorant slaves can be on these Southern plan- 
tations, if they have masters of good common sense, forethought, 
and philanthropy of character. And what can, and what does stimu- 
late us to cultivate these characteristics of mind and heart so effec- 
tually,- as the knowledge that we all possess from our childhood, that 
they are indispensably necessary to our conducting our plantations 
with success. How thankful I am to God, that the slave, Avho seems 
given up to the will of his master, should have the very strongest 
passion of that master's heart enlisted to protect him and provide for 
his every want. If a master by cruelty or oppression hurts his slave, 
he hurts himself in his pecuniary interests, he hurts himself in public 
opinion (that, in chivalrous South Carolina, regards a man a mean, 
cowardly wretch, who could be brutal or unkind to those who are 
utterly dependent on him), and he hurts himself in his conscience, 
which is educated to believe that the wrath of God will fall without 
mercy on the oppressor. 

Let sickly Northern sentimentalists, then, expend all their surplus 
benevolence on the degraded, ignorant, starving, vicious foreigners 
that arrive by thousands daily in their midst ; and when they have 
thus, by superhuman energy, reclaimed these their immediate neigh- 
bors from degradation, vice, and misery in Boston, New York, Phila- 
delphia, and other Northern cities, they can start off on a mission to 
South Carolina, as apostles of this age of progress ; and, after giving 
the planters due notice to quit the home of their fathers, on pain of 
being butchered by servile insurrection, we will humbly crave to 
be allowed to look on at a respectful distance, to see if their almighti- 
nesses can make a great and glorious nation of the slaves, that we 
ourselves have for two hundred years been compelled to watch over, 
to think for, to protect, to feed, and to clothe, with the unwearied 
interest of a father for his children. 

The abolitionists, I mean those few who are sincere in their con- 



LETTERS. 19 

cern for the slave, may be classed among tliose erratic enthusiasts, 
that believe this world is to be converted to righteousness by a twist 
and a jerk. It is a great pity that their idiosyncrasies did not lead 
them, first, to wage a war against all the liars, thieves, murderers, and 
adulterers, in this sin-deluged world ; and then, after they have ac- 
complished the glorious work of making order out of all the confusion 
occasioned by the fall of Adam, after we have learned "to love God 
with all our hearts, and our neighbor as ourselves," nothing will be 
easier than to get freedom, temporal and spiritual freedom, for the 
whole human race, that are now in bondage to their fellow-man, or 
are in the still more hopeless bondage to their own evil passions. 
" He that ruleth his own spirit," says the Bible, "is greater than he 
who taketh a city." And I am very sure, that the spirit of vain- 
glory, the desire to do some great thing, that induces the abolitionist 
to harden his heart against the miserable starving white emigrants, 
that surround his door in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, and 
then to expend his sensibility on our fat, healthy, happy slaves in the 
far off South, is a species of monomania, that is inherent in am- 
bitious, but weak, unbalanced minds. If these said mob instigators 
would seek true Christian charity, and self-abasement ; if these 
Quixotic revolutionizers would strive to obtain that love to all of 
God's creatures, that is a divine gift ; if they would be willing to do 
good in secret among all the pitiable objects of charity that are 
immediately thrown by Providence on their sympathies, I am very 
sure they would act more consistently as philanthropists, gain more 
of the confidence and respect of their neighbors, and realize more of 
the approbation of the Almighty, than if they expended every power 
of their mind and heart in stirring up the slaves to suspect, to hate, to 
fly from, or drench South Carolina in the blood of their masters. 

I have just been conversing with the sons of Mr. Gorsuch, who, 
you know, was murdered a short time ago, near Philadelphia. They 
said, the first night they went in search of their fugitives, they were 
frustrated, and the second night they were attacked in the outskirt of 
the woods by eighty negroes, with pistols and clubs, three or four feet 
long, and as stout as a man's arm ; that these negroes had been so 
excited by the abolitionists, that they were foaming at the mouth with 
fiendish passions; that they cried out to one another, "Kill them, kill 
them, murder them all." They aimed their blows with such deadly 
effect, that soon old Mr. Gorsuch fell a mangled corpse ; and one of 
his sons, not far off, lay weltering in his own blood, utterly helpless; 
and when he asked a white man, standing near, who seemed to be in 



20 LETTERS. 

league with these fiends, to hold up his dying head, he would not, 
and even refused to give him a "cup of cold water," until he had 
many times implored him for it. Old Mr. Gorsuch, who was thus 
murdered, had been a Christian for twenty-six years ; and his views 
of eternity were so vivid, that his brother told me he could never 
be induced to inflict a mortal blow on any fellow-creature ; he there- 
fore fell an unresisting victim to the cruel wrath of these eighty 
black fiends. This abolition and negro mob, having, as they thought, 
mui'dered both father and son, went in pursuit of two other relatives, 
who had accompanied Mr. Gorsuch. They shot at these gentlemen 
so many times that one of them told me that his coat and hat 
were riddled with the shot; and both of them were so cruelly 
beaten, that they did not recover their health for many weeks. 
Their own ammunition got wet in the dew, and therefore was of 
little use to protect them against such fearful odds. Mr. Gorsuch's 
said fugitives were some twenty or twenty -two years of age, and they 
were to have had their freedom when they were twenty-eight years 
old. They ran away from their master, because they had stolen 
great quantities of his wheat, and sold it ; and yet, as thieves, they 
were enticed away, and then stimulated to murder the master whose 
goods they had purloined. This, my brother, is the spirit of the 
abolitionists ; and if such traitors to their country's laws, and the 
laws of God, if such murderers can escape, our government is en- 
titled to no respect. 

There scarcely ever was a time in the history of the world, when 
man did not enslave his fellow-man, and, probably, this will continue 
to be practised, more or less, until the glorious season of the millen- 
nium, "when the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and a little child 
shall lead them." 

AYhy, oh why! does not the abolitionist, if he professes Christ- 
ianity, see that his work is not of God ? That to urge a slave to 
suspect, to hate, to fly from, and to murder the master, who has 
reared him up from infancy ; who has given him everything necessary 
to life or godliness ; who has protected him from every foe, even the 
foes of his own lazy and evil nature ; who has watched over him in 
sickness, supported him in old age, and felt responsible about his 
being educated for happiness beyond the tomb ; — I say, why do not 
these deluded enthusiasts see, that they are carrying out, not God's 
will, but that of the devil ? They are surely doing evil, that good may 
come. Jesus Christ, our great Exemplar, who "went about doing 
good," and who yet lived in countries teeming with the most abject 



LETTERS. 21 

slavery; — yes, he who possessed perfect ■wisdom and perfect love to 
all of God's creatures, never was known to interfere byword or deed 
with civil government. No. His mission was to preach the ab- 
solute necessity of holiness, to both bond and free. The master and 
the slave have their own relative duties clearly laid down in the Bible ; 
and if the abolitionist would strive to teach the poor negro to prepare 
for a glorious immortality, by mortifying all their evil and corrupt 
affections, and by doing their every duty in the station in which God 
has placed them, they would then, indeed, be apostles of the age of 
progress, and deserve to be classed among the true Christian friends 
of Africa's benighted hosts. 

Slavery or freedom for the slaves is not an open question under 
the present Constitution of these United States. The North must 
deliver to us our fugitives from labor, or must be guilty of treason 
against the known laws of the country. The Southern men entered 
this confederacy with their slaves. And so long as this Union is to 
hold together, so long the North has no right to decide for us, whether 
slavery or unlicensed freedom is best for our poor, ignorant, depend- 
ent slaves. Even should this Union be dissolved, the Southern men 
would not give up their property, and the North would have to wage 
a war of extermination against every white man in the Southern 
States, before any such fanatical schemes could be carried out. No 
sane man asks a numerous population to give up every cent of theu' 
property, and become beggars, for the sake of an impracticable abstract 
principle of freedom. Such absurd moon-struck theorists, not to say 
fools, would employ their time to a more useful purpose, by striving to 
find out " how many spirits can dance upon the point of a needle." 

"We never even can be made to believe, that their pretended love 
of universal freedom, is not mere canting hypocrisy, until they them- 
selves do what they require us to do ; that is, give up all their pro- 
perty. Yes, sell all their merchandize, and deliver up all their bank 
stock, and every cent they own, to the cause of liberty ; the Quixotic 
cause of freeing our slaves. I, for one, am ready at any moment, to 
remove the stumbling-block of slavery out of my Northern brother's 
way, if he will give me the means to obtain my daily bread ; that is, 
if he will give me six or seven hundred dollars a piece for every slave 
I own, and afterwards promise me to see that, as a freeman, he is as 
well taken care of as he was when I owned him as property. 

St. Paul said, "that if meat caused his brother to offend, he would 
eat no meat as long as the world lasted ;" and, in the spirit of this 
beautiful sentiment, I am sure that I can promise for all real Clu-ist- 



22 LETTERS. 

ians in the South, that, if their weak-minded abolitionist brother will 
imitate the like self-sacrifice, and send them a check on their bank 
for the above-named necessary sum of carnal dust, for each of their 
slaves, they too will carry out towards them in good faitli the senti- 
ment of Paul. That, although meat is permitted him to eat, every 
day, by God himself, he will give it up, rather than offend even a 
simple, narrow-minded, but sincere lover of Jesus Christ. 

The Southern men are educated as planters, not manufacturers, or 
merchants ; and, consequently, if our slaves are taken from us, we are 
sunk in poverty. A white man cannot bear the scorching sun of the 
South, like the African Avho luxuriates in the heat of our climate, and 
dies when he is subjected to the cold of the North. Even the mu- 
latto cannot bear the heat of our cotton-fields. Consequently, if the 
slaves were given their freedom, the cotton that supplies the whole 
North would cease to be grown ; for none but our black people can 
raise it ; and they are so inherently lazy, that they never could be hired 
to work consecutively, for a whole year, without compulsion. Their 
capriciousness would, without fail, lose every crop of cotton. Let 
me here quote for you some remarks that I have found in letters 
written from Dominica, after the emancipation of the slaves in the 
British West India Islands. These letters were addressed to a Mr. 
Roberts, of New Jersey, by his son-in-law in Dominica. He says : 
" The emancipation of the negroes has, my dear father, been the de- 
struction of Dominica ; and the Avhole colony is completely ruined, as 
the negroes will not work." 

"Your coffee estates on this island, that in 1803 yielded you 
tAventy thousand a year, do not now yield your son one dollar. 
The price of sugar and coffee is so much depreciated, that half the 
estates in the West Indies give no income whatever to the proprie- 
tors. The free negroes are so lazy, they will not pick up the coffee 
for love or for money, and we do not make enough to pay for the 
freight of our produce to England. The estates here, that were 
valued at several hundred thousand dollars, if sold noiv, would not 
command the sums that were made from their yearly produce alone. 
I should be very glad if I could give up business, but tlic truth is, 
those Avho are concerned in West India affiirs are sunk to the lowest 
state of depression ; many planters who had their ten thousand pounds 
a year have now no income at all." 

Can any real lover of his country wish to see any part of the 
United States thus impoverished, by giving the negroes up to the 
only freedom Avhich their degraded minds crave? AVhich is freedom 



LETTERS. 23 

from labor, and freedom to indulge tlieir criminal passions? But, 
my brother, a truce to these reflections on the strange medley of in- 
consistent passions, and yet, at times, godlike aims, that convulse 
and govern the human heart. "A worm, a God, I tremble at my- 
self, and in myself am lost." When I first realized inductive powers 
of mind, in very early youth, I lived day and night in a sort of delirium 
of blissful reflection on the lofty dignity, the perfection that the 
human mind had lost in Adam, but had now regained by the atone- 
ment of Christ — and I said to myself, " if all things ai-e possible to 
him that belicveth," why cannot every believer attain to that faith 
which will enable him to keep the holy law of God always (even as 
Christ did in his human nature) ; and thus be exalted above all the 
ignorance, foolishness, and degraded passions that sin first generated 
in our hearts and minds. I studied the character of Jesus Christ, 
as it was developed by his conduct while he was on earth, until I 
became transported with its sublime wisdom and beauty, and I felt 
every earthly ambition mean, in comparison with the exalted moral 
aspiration of being like Christ. I determined, at once, to crush all 
selfishness in motive or act ; all foolish pride and passion, and all 
ambition that did not centre in this highest moral attainment. Yes, 
I determined to "rule my own spirit" with a rod of iron, until it 
obeyed my newly formed appreciation of what was really noble and 
true. The fierce struggles of an untamed will, that was every mo- 
ment to be watched and dethroned by its high toned moral adversary, 
were such as God only can know and reward. I watched every 
thought, every motive, every act of my life, to see if they reflected 
the mind of Christ. I studied the Bible, night and day, with a 
relish I never realized from studying any other book ; because I 
knew it was all truth, and, moreover, addressed to every individual 
believer, who had a personal right to claim every promise contained 
in it. The idea of holding communion with the God of heaven ; of 
having the approving sympathy of Jesus Christ in all our aims, even 
while we are on earth, made me feel as if a Christian occupied a 
higher position than any king in this world. My enthusiasm became 
deeper, the more I contemplated the moral exaltation that the death 
of Christ had purchased for our once fallen natures. I determined 
to test how far an appropriation of the promises of God to his peo- 
ple, in reference to holiness, could be attained in this world ; as St. 
Paul's description of perfect charity in the 13th chapter of 1st Corin- 
thians embraces in its details traits of endurance that are surely 
necessary for us only in tins world, as no one will need them in 



24 LETTERS. 

heaven. I knoAV that the Bible cannot hold out "the word of pro- 
mise to the ear, and break it to the hope," and, therefore, the believer 
who yearns to have the noble mind of Christ every moment that he 
lives in this world, must be mistaken in asserting that death is our 
only deliverer from sin. I cannot describe to you, my brother, the 
enthusiasm, the absolute absorption of my mind on these subjects. 
As I had an abundant competence, I spent my whole time in visiting 
and instructing the poor ; in nursing the sick ; in searching out what 
was real grief among the afflicted ; and in watching the dying Christ- 
ian, to see if his mind developed those high moral characteristics 
that would fit him to sit with Jesus Christ at the right hand of the 
holy God. Not only did I entertain these views of Christian per- 
fection for myself, but I held the whole world responsible to have 
like aims, and dealt out my maledictions by the square yard to all 
delinquents. You may form then some idea of the tortures I must 
have endured from hourly self-examination; and I was, after ten 
years remaining in this crucible, fain to exclaim with Luther, " that 
old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon." Still, I believe 
that the only reason we have not the mind of Christ in all our daily 
life, is because we have too much love of carnal self in us to desire it. 

But now, my brother, after a long and careful study of my own 
heart, and the heart of the world, is it developed at the metropolis 
with the faithfulness of a Daguerreotype to every moral observer ? 
I have become exceedingly mellowed in my theories about the dignity 
of human nature, and I feel peculiarly sympathetic towards all the 
beforcmentioned delinquents. Still, I cannot, no, I cannot find any 
apology for the abolitionists, who seem to set at defiance, not only the 
letter, but the spirit of God's holy law, are traitors to their own 
noble country, and appear determined, as far as their influence goes, 
to blot out of existence this far-famed Republic, by schism in the 
body politic, that will rend it to pieces, after first deluging the States 
in blood. And this home of the oppressed of all nations will then 
become a hissing and a by-word to the whole world. 

"A house divided against itself cannot stand." But I promised 
' to reveal to you the condition of the degraded class of fugitive slaves 
and colored people in the Northern cities ; and, after your heart has 
been wrung by their awful destitution, I desire you to tell me if 
such misery was ever heard of, or ever could by any possibility be 
experienced by any of our slaves in South Carolina. The Southern 
planter would feel just as deeply humiliated, if he ascertained his 
slave had been forced to beg from door to door, as he wQuld feel if 



LETTERS. 25 

he heard his own chihl had been necessitated to beg from door to 
door. I never, in my whole life, heard of a slave begging alms. But 
I find that, in the fullness of my heart, I have already transcended 
the bounds of a letter, and therefore must defer the description of 
the lowest classes of colored people in Philadelphia. The facts I 
have accumulated, I shall feel it my imperative duty to disseminate 
among the members of Congress ; and as I possess the printed pam- 
phlets themselves, that were written, not by the enemies of the free 
negroes, but by gentlemen of observation, philanthropy, and ability, 
who were evidently aiming to show off the better class of colored 
people, as in a state of enviable prosperity in Philadelphia, I hope 
to gain serious and candid consideration for these startling facts. 
Truth is mighty, and must prevail ; and so it happened that two 
letters, descriptive of the destitution of the degraded class of negroes 
in Philadelphia, found their way into the same statistical pamphlets 
that were designed to give the most flattering accounts of the progress 
of civilization among the black freemen of the North. 



LETTER IV. 

"Washington, Nov. 20, 1851. 
To General John H. Howard : — 

I PROMISED, in my last letter, to reveal to you the condition of the 
degraded fugitive slaves, and the degraded colored people generally, 
who infest the Northern cities, but particularly New York and Phila- 
delphia. 

Our fugitives from labor, you know, are almost always those 
who will not work ; who are lazy, obstinate, and brutal in their 
passions, and, indeed, perfect desperadoes; who gain a livelihood 
by stealing, and other extempore means. You remember that 
one of these runaway negroes of Mr. INIoultric shot and killed 
his own fellow-servant not long since. I was very curious, there- 
fore, to find out if such murderous, lazy villains, could be enticed 
from South Carolina, and, under the revolutionizing patronage of 
the abolitionists, become respectable, dignified, and wealthy ladies 
and gentlemen ; but now, my brother, listen to me, when I assure 
you that the moral, industrious, enterprising negro freeman, in Phila" 
delphia, accumulates the same comforts for his wife and children, 



26 LETTERS. 

that the moral, industrious, enterprising slave surrounds himself with 
on our Southern plantations. Our slaves, however, have no cares 
about want from sickness or old age, while the freeman there works 
harder, every day of his life, than the slave does; and is, moreover, 
constantly kept on the tenter-hooks, lest his employer should dismiss 
him, or lest he should become in arrears to his creditors from sick- 
ness, or the enfeebling effects of age. 

This is the condition of the most respectable thriving negroes of 
Philadelphia. Now, let me hold up the curtain of misery, that hides 
from common observers the condition of the most degraded fugitive 
slaves, and the most degraded colored people of that city. 

Do not understand me as intending to anathematize the inhabit- 
ants of the City of Brotherly Love for want of humanity to the co- 
lored people in their midst, as there arc many noble philanthropists 
and Quakers there Avho freely give alms. My object is to prove that 
the black race are really inferior in their mental organization to the 
white race, and that God does not design them, in this country, to 
govern themselves ; and that, when they are delivered up to self- 
government in the North, a large class of them languish and die from 
the effects of the climate, from obstinate laziness, vice, and drunk- 
enness, and from their erratic mode of living. 

Dr. Benjamin Coates, of Philadelphia, who is a man of talent, 
observation, and education, says : — 

" The negro, or even the mulatto, is a very different person in his 
physical and psychical conformation from that one who may be pre- 
sumed to have been held in view in our legislation, the white Anglo- 
Saxon, Celt, or German. His ancestry, and the prototype of his 
race, are calculated for the torrid zone ; and even the mixed progeny 
suffer severely and mortally by our cold. Cheerful, merry, lounging, 
and careless, the Ethiopian American deeply enjoys the sun and 
light ; delights in the open air, and is, as a general rule, constitu- 
tionally free from that deep thoughtful anxiety for the future so con- 
spicuous in his paler neighbor." 

Dr. Coates also makes some sensible remarks on the dreadful 
effects of prison discipline and solitary confinement, for any length 
of time, on the blacks. " The face of heaven," says he, "seems to 
him necessary to his existence ; and though long confinement is, in 
his case, less productive of gloomy remorse, it is far more depressing 
to his vitality." " The morl)id effects of this are unhappily visible 
in the production of scrofula and pulmonary consumption ; more 
than eighty-eight per cent, of the deaths being from chronic affec- 



LETTERS. 27 

tions of the lungs, and from the first-named disorder." " The moral 
consequences are, in an equivalent degree, depressing to the mind." 
" It is not by remorse and anguish that he is affected so much, as 
by intellectual and moral weakness and decay ; and gloomy con- 
finement becomes thus, to him, mentally, as well as physically, a 
nearer approach to the punishment of death. 

" The effect of separate imprisonment has not been, as has been 
erroneously charged against it, to produce insanity, although humane 
and strict analysis has shown many to have been affected both Avith 
insanity and with imbecility, at the times when they have committed 
the offences for which they are sentenced. 

" The effect upon the unfortunate colored prisoners, though scarcely 
perceptible upon the whites, has been to produce not mania, but 
weakness of mind; dementia, instead of deranged excitement." 

Now, my brother, who ever heard of a prison being built on one of 
our southern plantations ? When the slave commits a crime, his master 
switches him, with the same impulse that he switches his own child. 
The slave does not hate him for thus punishing him, any more than 
his child does ; and an hour afterwards he is as merry, perhaps, as 
if no chastisement had been inflicted on him. Is not such punish- 
ment much more merciful, much more suited to the negro mind, than 
to shut him up in a prison for months in the Northern cities, where 
confinement is known to have the above-named lamentable effects ? 
They say here, that w^e sell our slaves. This is sometimes true ; but 
we sell them to a master whose self-interest is just as much concerned 
as our own, to treat him kindly. It is a base falsehood that is ful- 
minated against us, that we separate a mother from her little children, 
when we sell them. And it is equally false, that the master locks up 
all of his slaves every night, and arms himself Avith swords and guns, 
to protect himself, for fear of their nocturnal treacherous designs. 
So far from it, the master regards his slaves the best friends he has 
on earth. These and numerous other absurdities are believed by the 
abolitionists. I have introduced the remarks of Dr. Coates, to let 
you see what are the real opinions of thinking men and physicians 
at the North, about the developments, physical and mental, of the 
black race, and then to express my unfeigned astonishment that, with 
such facts staring them in the face, any persons could be found so 
malignant and fanatical as to inveigle the colored people from their 
haj)py home, in the warm sunny South, to come to the North to 
gain suicidal freedom. 

Even the runaway slaves whom the abolitionists have smuggled into 



28 LETTERS. 

Canada, are, I learn from the papers, in such a desperate state of 
hopeless misery (as they never will work without compulsion), that 
the public has been forced to raise a fund to keep them from famish- 
ing in their midst. 

Leaving the abolitionists, however, to the deep and hopeless re- 
morse that all feel sooner or later, who have seduced a fellow-immor- 
tal into misery and crime, I will now proceed to state the condi- 
tion of the degraded class of black people in Philadelphia. I men- 
tion simply what I have heard from some of the most respectable old 
citizens of that city. I was very anxious to see for myself such 
speaking pictures of the fanaticism of those who steal away our 
slaves and bring them here to perish ; but I was forbidden by my 
husband to go into places teeming with pestilence, disease, and 
frightful enormities. An excellent Christian lady told me that she 
was walking in company with her married daughter one night in 
Reading, near Philadelphia, and she heard groans of anguish. She 
stopped, and soon saw a wretched black woman lying on the curb- 
stone, apparently convulsed with pain. She advanced towards her, 
to know what was the matter. The poor creature held on to her, 
and would not let her go. Soon, one or two humane white men were 
attracted to the spot, and, after seeing her desperate condition, they 
applied to five different negro houses in the neighborhood to beg 
them to take her in, but she was refused admittance, although they 
were offered five dollars to let her stay with them just for one night. 
These men, however, obtained an old settee, and laid her on it. It 
was bitter cold, in the month of February, and she had on little 
or no warm clothing. In this extremity, she was carried into a 
stable near by, and there her child was born. The good Samaritan 
that first found her never left her side until she had sent to all her 
friends, and had the poor woman made comfortable. She says, in this 
lonely stable she thought of the birth of the Saviour, and knew his 
spirit was near her, although it Avas midnight, to shield her and her 
helpless charge from every harm. 

Another very intelligent old lady told me that one of her friends 
became so much excited about the condition of the colored people in 
Philadelphia, that she insisted on her going with her to see what could 
be done. Tlicy first met an emaciated little girl five years old with a 
broken tumbler in her hand. It contained as much whiskey as it 
could hold ; and when they asked the child what she was going to do 
with it, she replied, "Why, drink it, to be sure." They then met 
numbers of drunken and horrid-looking black women, and finally, 



LETTERS. 29 

after seeing all they could, they came to the conclusion that no 
almsgiving could reach these people ; for, if you give them money, 
food, or clothing, it was all pawned at the shops for drink. 

A gentleman also called on us, and not knowing I was a South- 
erner, began to converse on the hopeless degradation of some of the 
free blacks in this city. He said, he had been informed that many 
of them lived in boxes, without any bedding or any covering, and 
that they had to pay the landlords of this unique lodging a few cents 
every night. In the day, they followed the trade of ragging and 
boning, that is, picking up the rags and the offal thrown out in the 
street, and selling them to some manufactory for a penny or two, 
which answered to defray the expense of the before-mentioned lodg- 
ings. Their food they obtained by begging and stealing. 

This gentleman also said, "that not a half mile from Philadelphia, 
he understood there were three houses in which three hundred of the 
most degraded class of negroes lived. Their food, when they had 
any, was bread and grog ; and in 1846, the ship-fever got in among 
them, and they died like dogs. Finally, the city authorities had to 
interfere, and break up these pestilential abodes." 

Another gentleman told me, that these said negroes sometimes 
hired for a cent a narrow cellar to sleep in, and as its architecture 
did not admit of their lying down, they fastened a rope under their 
arms, which was suspended from the wall (somewhat, I suppose, 
after the manner of a modern baby-jumper), and there swung them- 
selves to sleep. But if their slumbers were continued after early 
dawn, the landlord of the cellar would cut the rope and let them fall 
into the pit below, to wake them up. Another gentleman told me 
that a man in Philadelphia hired a long house, and had shelves 
arranged the whole length of it, up to the top of the ceiling. These 
shelves were rented out for four cents each to the negroes ; that is, each 
one could hire his own length on the shelf for the above sum. The 
shelves contained not a single bed or a single inch of covering. They 
gave the same landlord four more cents for their food, which was 
obtained by him in this way. He hired every morning some black 
people to go from door to door and beg for cold victuals. This food 
they threw into the bags brought for the purpose ; so that fish, flesh, 
fowl, vegetables, and fruits were thrown in promiscuously together, 
and when it was carried home to the landlord, he spread out a table, 
without any expense, with this unique hash. 

These eight pennies Avere made by ragging and boning and priz- 
ing, and after some few years, the proceeds from this original mode 



30 LETTERS. 

of keeping a boarding-liouse, footed up thirty thousand dollars to the 
landlord. 

I was of coui'se astounded beyond belief by hearing such appalling 
accounts of misery; but I "was more astounded, the next week, to 
receive from a highly respectable gentleman, a pamphlet containing a 
statistical inquiry into the condition of the people of color in the 
city and districts of Philadelphia. The pamphlet was designed to 
give a flattering view of the better classes of negroes; but unfortu- 
nately two letters, that I will now quote verbatim, found their way 
into the latter part of the said pamphlet. 

But first, let me remark that South Carolina abounds with black 
mechanics, who can, in their own time, make money enough to enrich 
themselves with every comfort of life, as you knoAV how rich your 
blacksmiths are. They are, therefore, on a par with the best classes 
of black freemen at the North ; but listen now to the description of 
the degraded classes of colored people in Philadelphia, as detailed in 
the said letters. ^, 

Philadelphia, jDcc. 18, 1848. 

" During the fall and winter of 1845 and 1846, I observed much 
misery and distress among a portion of the colored population of the 
city and suburbs, which was much increased in the fall and winter of 
1846 and 1847. During the period before named, from September, 
1837, to April, 1848, it increased to such extent as made it neces- 
sary to ask the intervention of the board of health and guardians of 
the poor. In that time, there came under my notice, seventy-six 
cases, colored, male and female (mostly within six blocks or squares 
in the district of Moyamensing), whose deaths, after a full and 
thorough investigation of each case, were attributable to intempe- 
rance, exposure, want of nourishment, &c. ; of this number, eighteen 
■were from 18 to 30 years of age ; forty-six from 30 to 50 years, and 
twelve from 50 to 90 years, besides some children who also died from 
exposure and want of proper nourishment and care. 

" Many were found dead in cold and exposed rooms and garrets, 
board shanties, five and six feet high,' and as many feet square, erected 
and rented for lodging purposes, mostly without any comforts save 
the bare floor, with the cold penetrating between the boards, and 
through the holes and crevices on all sides ; some in cold, wet, and 
damp cellars, with naked walls, and in many instances without floors ; 
and others found dead lying in back yards, in alleys, and other ex- 
posed situations, 



LETTERS. 31 

" These cases were principally confined to tlie lowest and most de- 
graded of the colored population, whose occupations were ragging, 
boning, and prizing. Hundreds are engaged in those occupations, 
and living as others have, that have died ; many of whom, unless 
provided for, must become victims of death, through their habits and 
exposure, should the coming winter be at all severe. Most of them 
have no home, depending chiefly upon the success of their pursuits 
through the day, either in earning or begging (and I may add, steal- 
ing), sufficient to pay their grog and lodging. For food, they depend 
mostly upon begging, or gathering from the street Avhat is thrown 
from the houses or kitchens of others. 

" Lodgings are obtained from a penny to sixpence a night, accord- 
ing to the extent of the accommodations, with or without an old stove, 
generally without a pipe, a furnace or fireplace, so that a fire may 
be had if they have means to pay for a few sticks of wood, or some 
coal ; and were it not for the crevices and openings admitting fresh 
air, many would be sufi'ocated (a few have been) by smoke and coal 
gas. It is no uncommon circumstance to find several sitting around 
on the floor with an open furnace in their midst, burning coal. Those 
places are mostly back from the street, not observable in passing, 
reached through narrow alleys, or by a back entrance, if it be a house 
fronting the main street, wherein each story is subdivided into nume- 
rous small rooms, ofttimes made to accommodate as many as can be 
stowed into them, without regard to color or sex. Such articles as 
an old bed, a carpet, or even straw upon the floor, are not often 
seen. 

" Notwithstanding their degraded occupation, yet it is possible for 
them to earn from ten to fifteen cents per day. There are numerous 
places for the disposal of their rags, bones, &c., but there are far more 
numerous places (and constantly increasing) for the disposal of their 
hard-earned (or ill gotten) pennies ; namely, at small shops stocked with 
a few stale loaves of bread, a few potatoes, a small quantity of split 
wood, some candles, a few dried and stale herring, &c., exposed to 
view, serving too often as a cloak, whilst behind and under the counter, 
concealed from the eye, are kegs, jugs, bottles, and measures, con- 
taining the poison, some at four and five cents a pint, and which is 
the great leading cause of the misery, degradation, and death of so 
many. 

" Though I have observed much misery and distress both amono; 
blacks and whites, in diifercnt sections of the city and suburbs, vet 



32 LETTERS. 

in no portion to that extent as was found in a small portion of Moya- 
mensing, among the blacks, principally in the smaller streets, courts, 
and alleys, between Fifth and Eighth, and South and Fitzwater 
Streets. 

"Respectfully, your friend, 

"N. B. LEIDY." 

" A visit to the scene of this distress, made in the latter part of 
the ninth month, 1847, is thus described : — 

" The vicinity of the place we sought was pointed out by a large 
number of colored people congregated on the neighboring pavements. 
We first inspected the rooms, yards, and cellars of the four or five 
houses next above Baker street, on Seventh. The cellars were 
wretchedly dark, damp, and dirty, and were generally rented for 
twelve and a-half cents per night. These were occupied by one or 
more families at the present time ; but, in the winter season, when 
the frost drives those who in summer sleep abroad in fields, in board- 
yards, in sheds, to seek more effectual shelter, they often contain 
from twelve to twenty lodgers per night. Commencing at the back 
of each house are small wooden buildings roughly put together, about 
six feet square, without windows or fire-places, a hole about a foot 
square being left in the front, alongside of the door, to let in fresh air 
and light, and to let out foul air and smoke. These desolate pens, 
the roofs of which are generally leaky, and thin floors, so low that 
more or less water comes in on them from the yard in rainy weather, 
would not give comfortable winter accommodation to a cow. Although 
as dismal as dirt, damp, and insufficient ventilation can make them, 
they are nearly all inhabited. In one of the first we entered, we 
found the dead body of a large negro man, who had died sud- 
denly there. This pen was about eight feet deep by six wide. 
There was no bedding in it, but a box or two around the sides fur- 
nished places where two colored persons, one said to be the wife of 
the deceased, were lying, either drunk or fast asleep. The body of 
the dead man was on the wet floor, beneath an old torn coverlet. 
The death had taken place some hours before ; the coroner had been 
sent for, but had not yet arrived. A few feet south, in one of the 
pens attached to the adjoining house, two days before, a colored 
female had been found dead. The hole from which she was taken 
appeared smaller than its neighbors generally, and had not as yet 
obtained another tenant. 

" Let me introduce you to our ' Astor House,' said our guide, turn- 



LETTERS. 33 

ing into an alley between two of the buildings on Baker street. We 
followed through a dirty passage, so narrow, a stout man would have 
found it tight work to have threaded it. Looking before us, the yard 
seemed unusually dark. This, we found, was occasioned by a long 
range of two story pens, with a projecting boarded walk above the 
lower tier for the inhabitants of the second story to get to the doors 
of their apartments. This covered nearly all the narrow yard, and 
served to exclude light from the dwellings below. We looked in every 
one of these dismal abodes of human wretchedness. Here were dark, 
damp holes six feet square, without a bed in any of them, and gene- 
rally without furniture, occupied by one or two families; apartments 
Avhere privacy of any kind was unknown ; where comfort never ap- 
peared. We endeavored, with the aid of as much light as at mid-day 
could find access through the open door, to see into the dark corners 
of these contracted abodes ; and as we became impressed with their 
utter desolateness, the absence of bedding, and of aught to rest on 
but a bit of old matting on a wet floor, we felt sick and oppressed. 
Disagreeable odors of many kinds were ever arising ; and with no 
ventilation but the open door, and the foot square hole in the front 
of the pen, we could scarcely think it possible that life coukl be sup- 
ported, when winter compelled them to have fire in charcoal furnaces. 
With sad feelings we went from door to door, speaking to all, inquir- 
ing the number of their inmates, the rent they paid, and generally 
the business they followed to obtain a living. To this last question 
the usual answer was 'ragging and boning.' Some of these six by 
six holes had six and even eight persons in them, but more generally 
two to four. In one or two instances, a single man rented one for 
himself. The last of the lower story of the ' Astor' was occupied by 
a black man, his black wife, and an Irish woman. The white woman 
was half standing, half leaning against some sort of a box, the blacks 
were reclining upon the piece of old matting, perhaps four feet wide, 
which, by night, furnished the only bed of the three. Passing to the 
end of the row, we ventured up steps much broken, and very unsafe, 
to the second story platform, and visited each apartment there. It 
is not in the power of language to convey an adequate impression of 
the scene on this property ; the filth, the odor, the bodily discom- 
fort, the moral degradation everywhere apparent. Descending with 
difficulty, we proceeded to examine the cellars and rooms in a build- 
ing still further back, having tlie same owner. The same want of 
accommodations Avere observed ; few, if any, there, having a trace of 
bedding. For the pens, ten cents a night were paid generally ; eight 
3 



34 LETTERS. 

cents for the rest. The miserable apartments in the houses brought 
about the same prices. Some rooms, however, rented as high as one 
dollar per week. In the damp double row of the ' Astor building,' 
we found, although occupied by apparently young married people, 
there was no child. Neither were there children to be found, except 
as a very rare instance, in any of the pens we examined on other pro- 
perty around. Struck with the fact, we concluded that an infant, if 
born in them, could scarcely survive there many weeks. In those 
families occupying apartments in buildings, which might by courtesy 
be called houses, though all in these parts were miserably destitute of 
comforts, there were a few children. They were not, however, either 
in number or appearance, to be compared with those healthy, happy 
beings, who swarm around the colored man's home in country places. 
" The preceding investigation has been carefully made from the 
statistics obtained by personal inquiry, from door to door, and which 
were as accurate as can be expected from such inquiries addressed to 
people, many of whom are too ignorant themselves to give competent 
answers. The general results may, it is believed, be relied upon as 
exhibiting the comparative situation of the different sections of our 
colored population ; and, without placing too much reliance upon the 
numerical statements, they are probably near approximations to the 
truth." 

Such then, my brother, is the condition of the degraded portion of 
the negroes in Philadelphia. Can you be surprised, then, that I assert, 
that I can feel sympathy for a great many classes of sinners ; but 
for the abolitionist, the faithless, heartless, wicked smuggler of our 
slaves, who holds out the word of promise to the ear, and breaks it 
to the hope ; who entices him from his master and his home ; who 
harbors and conceals him from the law, when he commits murder and 
treason, and indulges in other diabolical passions ; and then, after he 
has, through their instigations, become an outlaw towards God and 
man, leaves him to perish temporally and eternally ; — I say, for the 
'abolitionists, whose creed leads them to do such things, I hope never 
to feel any sympathy, except that of wishing them converted to Christ- 
ianity, and then immediately transported to heaven ; for their fana- 
ticism could never be subdued by any religion yet attained on earth ; 
but, if they were all safely housed in heaven, they would be beyond 
the reach of temptation to fall back into their old sinful ways. 












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